Judge orders Lindsey Halligan to stop 'masquerading' as US attorney

 A few days ago I posted that a judge issued an order to show cause why Lindsey Halligan's conduct in continuing to refer to herself as "US Attorney" did not constitute a violation of rule 8.4 regarding dishonesty, among others.  See here and here.

A few days later, after a hearing, the judge has issued an order.  In it, the judge ordered the removal of the words “United States Attorney” from government filings in a case Halligan was involved in and prevented her from representing herself as the U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia unless appointed or confirmed by the Senate.  The judge also stated: “This charade of Ms. Halligan masquerading as the United States Attorney for this District in direct defiance of binding court orders must come to an end,”  Courthouse News Service has the story and a link to the order, here.

See also, 

Brutal, Humiliating Benchslap Puts An End To Lindsey Halligan Experiment.  Above the Law.

Judge posts job listing for prosecutor role Halligan claims to hold.  The Hill

Lindsey Halligan, Trump's former personal attorney, exits federal prosecutor post. NPR

ABA Publishes a new Ethics Opinion

The ABA's Standing Committee on Ethics and Professional Responsibility just published a new Formal Ethics Opinion (No. 520) on a lawyer’s obligation to convey information to a former client or successor counsel.  The abstract reads as follows: 

Model Rule 1.16(d) requires a lawyer to respond to requests for information from former clients or successor counsel in certain limited circumstances when doing so is necessary to protect client interests and reasonably practicable. Ordinarily, such a request will require a response when the requested information was acquired by the lawyer during the course of the representation, is unavailable from other sources, and is important to the client’s interests in the matter in which the lawyer formerly represented the client. Rule 1.16(d) does not require a lawyer to take steps to acquire new information, generate written responses, or provide further legal services to the client in response to a request for information.

Updates on the stories regarding Trump's illegally appointed prosecutors

Here are some follow-up stories related to the stories I posted a few days ago on judges disqualifying Trump appointed prosecutors:

Trump’s Loyalist Prosecutors Continue To Get Kicked Off Cases Because They’re Not Legally Appointed (Techdirt)

Halligan doubles down on US attorney title (The Hill)

Lindsey Halligan Says Her ‘I’m An Illegal Appointment’ T-Shirt Has People Asking A Lot Of Questions Already Answered By Her Shirt (Above the Law)

Pressure mounts as Trump digs in heels on US attorneys (The Hill)

Yet another case on improper use of AI in litigation

 The running count of cases involving courts complaining about hallucinated cases (created by AI) is now at 527.  (See here.)

Based on a recent one, Stacie Rosenzweig (in her post "We Should All Know Better By Now, But We Don't") reminds us of some basic rules of thumb:  

If you’re going to use AI to generate arguments or citations, verify every single one of them with a trusted legal research source.

Second, if despite your best efforts something sneaks through, fess up as soon as you learn about it, and move to correct or withdraw the pleading. Chances are, the opposing attorney won’t object.

Third, if you’re a supervisor, get a good AI policy in place before things go sideways, and train your junior attorneys and staff. And, if you’re a supervisor on a specific matter, . . . it may be time to trust less, and verify more.

And, it’s definitely time to trust less, verify more if your subordinate has already shown they’ve had problems with misuse of AI. . . . 

Finally—it’s not just this case. I’m seeing more of a duty of opposing counsel to detect, and to report, bad citations (AI or otherwise) rather than wait for the court to find them out. It’s always been a best practice to read each case cited by the opposing party (at least, each case substantively cited) so you can adequately respond to their arguments; finding out that a case doesn’t exist or that it’s not at all reflective of why it was cited shouldn’t be too much of a lift.

By the way, the sanctions imposed in the case were harsh:

The court declined to impose monetary sanctions. Instead, all three plaintiff attorneys were disqualified (and the whole case was stayed to allow the plaintiff to find new counsel), and they were ordered to provide copies of the order to the presiding judge in every pending case in which they were counsel of record (and the clerk was directed to send a copy of the order to the Mississippi regulatory authorities). The firm was directed to perform an audit, and, in the paragraph that made me shudder the hardest, the associate was ordered to seek withdrawal from every case in which she was appearing before that judge, and was forbidden from appearing in any other case before that judge for a period of two years.

And then think about what these sanctions meant for the clients and the firm.  Clients in unrelated cases lost their choice of counsel and the firm was forced to explain to other clients why that was the case.  I wonder if the clients will take their business elsewhere and whether the attorney will be seeking a new job... 

Two Trump appointed attorneys disqualified (one for claiming to hold office she does not; another after the court found he did not have a right to hold the office)

Back in November of 2025, a federal District Judge found that Lindsey Halligan's appointment as interim US Attorney was unlawful, and that, therefore, she had no authority to hold the office she claimed to hold at the time.  As you probably remember, this is the insurance lawyer with no prosecutorial experience that the Trump administration appointed, among other things, to bring charges against James Comey.  

Although the government appealed the judge's opinion and order, no court has issued a stay which means the order remains in place.  

For that reason, earlier this week, another federal judge was surprised to see that Ms. Halligan has continued to appear before his court still claiming to be a US Attorney, and promptly ordered her to explain herself and to explain why her conduct does not constitute a false or misleading statement in violation of professional conduct rules.  

The Hill and Above the Law have the full story (and the judge's order).

Meanwhile, in New York, another federal judge has disqualified the top federal prosecutor in upstate New York and blocked subpoenas his office issued to state Attorney General Letitia James finding that the lawyer's service as acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York “was and is unlawful” because the Justice Department maneuvered to keep him in the role after judges declined to extend his tenure, in violation of statutory procedure.

Again, The Hill and Above the Law have the story.